


Sharks & Symbiosis

by Imagining_in_the_Margins



Category: Criminal Minds (US TV)
Genre: Awkwardness, Established Relationship, F/M, Fluff, Menstruation, Self-Insert, Tooth-Rotting Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-04
Updated: 2020-06-04
Packaged: 2021-03-03 19:21:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,797
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24530707
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Imagining_in_the_Margins/pseuds/Imagining_in_the_Margins
Summary: Spencer helps Reader through her time of the month, and ends up talking way too much about fish.
Relationships: Spencer Reid/Reader
Comments: 2
Kudos: 135





	Sharks & Symbiosis

The beginning of a relationship is always strange, isn’t it? Like, we always refer to the start as the “honeymoon phase,” but I hoped my honeymoon would be significantly less awkward than this.

Spencer and I had started dating a couple weeks ago, and he’d only been to my house a couple of times before. The last time he had been here was the first time we’d finally, actually slept together. Don’t get me wrong – that hadn’t been awkward at all. In fact, everything about it had been absolutely perfect; better than anything I could have hoped for.

… Which is why _tonight_ was so incredibly awkward. He’d surprised me with a visit after returning home from a case. Normally, I would have loved the unexpected chance to see him. But today also happened to be the second day of my period, and I felt like absolute garbage. 

Now, it wasn’t like he had explicitly said he planned on staying over; he didn’t bring an overnight bag or anything of the sort. But now that we’d slept together, it just felt like the natural conclusion to a night. And even though I knew it was totally natural and safe and everything, I wasn’t loving the idea of having period sex. It didn’t matter how many times someone told me that it was good for cramps – I wasn’t interested.

While I knew that eventually I would have to talk to Spencer about it, or at least be more open about it, it just felt so strange to bring it up so soon into the relationship. Another problem was that despite all the reservations, my libido was through the fucking roof. Literally every time he touched me, I felt like I was going to explode.

All of these thoughts and concerns were wildly spinning in my mind to the soundtrack of the bullshit movie we’d put on in the background. Since Spencer had already seen it before, he’d joked that he didn’t need to look at the screen to watch it. I didn’t fight back when he’d kissed me, mostly because I _really_ wanted to kiss him.

But that kissing quickly escalated, and before I knew it I was already on my back on the couch. Eventually, his hand started to roam down my side before settling at my hip. I immediately jumped at the contact, grabbing his hand and pulling it back up to my chest.

Spencer paused, pulling back from the kiss to see the anxiety plastered on my face. “Is something wrong?” He was using that voice that meant he already knew the answer.

“Um… No?” It was more of a question than anything else. He didn’t buy it in the slightest, resisting my attempts to bring him back down into our embrace.

“What’s wrong?”

“It’s nothing!” I blurted out, shimmying under him in something vaguely resembling a tantrum.

“I don’t believe you.” He responded without any hesitation, carefully scrutinizing the way I was completely avoiding his gaze.

“You know what, you’re right.” I said, pushing him away so that I could climb out from underneath him. He let me, readjusting to his seat with a look on his face that resembled a sad puppy. It would have been cute if I didn’t feel so guilty. “Sorry, I’m just… not feeling well. I think I’m just going to go to bed.”

And then I felt worse, because _he_ looked guilty. But he’d done nothing wrong; he just showed up at the wrong time. Actually, everything about the timing of this was just off.

“I’m sorry,” he mumbled, scooting closer and brushing my hair out of my face before placing his hand on my forehead to check my temperature. Finding no fever, he traced the side of my face before stopping against my cheek. “Do you want me to stay?”

“No,” I lied, “I think I just want to be alone.” I crossed my legs, turning away from him and chewing on my lip in the hopes he would catch a hint before I needed to straight up kick him out.

“… Did I do something wrong?”

There wasn’t anything particularly peculiar about the question; I’d heard it from him a couple times. But this time, he was asking me if he’d messed up like that was the only acceptable answer.

“Why are you asking?” I asked with a matching skepticism.

“You’re saying you want me to go home but… You clearly don’t.”

It was probably just the period hormones, but the fact he could read me so easily got under my skin. I huffed, crossing my arms and shooting him a bored expression as I asked, “How could you possibly know that for sure?”

“Call it a hunch.”

“You don’t have hunches.” It was something he’d actually insisted on. He would always explain to me all the stimuli that your brain would sort through before it would settle on a “hunch.”

“No, I don’t.” He admitted with an awkward half smile, “I just don’t really want to tell you what your tells are, either.”

Picking up the pillow I’d been laying on seconds earlier, I swung it directly against his face. He tried to duck, but nearly fell off the couch. He had devolved into a weak fit of laughter, grabbing the pillow as I continued to swing at him. “You’ll try to hide them!” 

“That’s not fair,” I whined, “You know what yours are!”

“Yeah, but I don’t lie to you.”

It was only a frustrating response because he was right (like _always_ ). Ever since I’d met him, he’d always been annoyingly honest. He had made a point of not lying to me about anything. I’m sure there were things that he’d lie about eventually, but so far I hadn’t noticed any.

“I’m not lying! I just— It’s true I don’t feel well.” I wasn’t lying. I just happened to be leaving out the totally predictable and commonplace cause of my discomfort. He must have sensed my evasive honesty, watching me with narrowed eyes as he expected me to continue.

“I don’t! And that sucks!” I yelled again, waving my hands in the air as I spoke. “I wish I did so you could stay but… I don’t. So it would be best if you just went home.”

The long pause between us made me even _more_ uncomfortable. I could hear the gears in his mind turning slowly, putting together all the context clues he could to try and read my mind.

“… Is this because we had sex last time I stayed the night?”

Dating a profiler is _the fucking worst_.

“What? No!” I screeched in the most unconvincing tone of all time.

“You’re lying.”

I didn’t have to ask him what my tell was this time; I would have thought him an idiot if he didn’t figure it out that time. “Stop doing that!” I instructed with an accusing finger, “It’s not because we had sex, okay?”

“We don’t have to have sex again.” He said with a shrug, which only served to upset me more than comfort me. That time I knew it was the hormones that made me interpret that as an insult. I knew he enjoyed touching me – that’s literally what had led us here.

“I want to have sex with you, Spencer.” I sighed, fiddling with the strings on my sweatpants as I leaned back against the couch. “That’s not what it is.”

“I’m confused.”

“Ugh.” Smothering myself with the pillow, I let out an even more exasperated groan in the hopes he would just let me be dramatic on my own tonight. We could have this conversation later. “Please just let me curl up in a ball and go to sleep.” 

Then, I swear, I heard the lightbulb turn on in his stupid, brilliant head. Without any hesitation or shame at all, he formulated his question like he was answering a goddamn gameshow question. “Wait, are you just trying to avoid me figuring out that you’re on your period?”

“What?!”

“Why would you do that?” He quickly followed up, his face displaying the purest look of utter confusion I’d ever seen. Unfortunately I was way too distracted to enjoy how absolutely adorable it was.

“Why do you know that?!”

“Of course I noticed that,” he said, growing even more perplexed, “Was it supposed to be a secret?”

My face found it’s way back into the pillow as I muttered a quick, pained string of curses. I’d been sitting here mortified to bring up the topic, just for him to effortlessly bring it up and dismiss it like it was nothing.

“Why does it matter? Periods are normal. I’d be way more concerned if you suddenly didn’t have one.”

Oh my _god_. I both could and couldn’t believe the ease with which he was talking about this. All I knew is that I definitely, definitely wanted him to stop. Immediately. So I used the very same pillow, holding it up against his face as I warned, “Do not give me the birds and the bees talk right now, Spencer.”

“I just don’t know why it matters!” His loud, high pitched voice came through the pillow.

“Because we can’t have sex!” I finally blurted out, my eyes clenched tightly shut as a blush blossomed across my face.

“I mean, we could—“

“Spencer!” I yelled, nearly tackling him with the force I’d used to shove the pillow harder against his face.

He grabbed the pillow with both hands, tugging it down so that it wouldn’t cover his mouth anymore. I noticed that he was still smiling. “We don’t have to!”

There was a soft understanding in his eyes. I wanted to believe him, but I’d been here before too many times. But lost in my own experience, I’d forgotten that Spencer _was_ sort of new to this situation. He’d told me himself he didn’t really have any serious girlfriends before me.

“Every guy says that they don’t mind.” I clutched the pillow while I spoke, bringing it back to hug it in an inarguably defensive position over my chest. “But then ten minutes later they’re bored and end up leaving anyway.”

“I don’t want to leave, though. I’m not bored.”

I scoffed, rolling my eyes at how typical he sounded. It wasn’t entirely fair of me, though. He was different from basically every other person I’d ever met. I wished that I knew his tells then, because I needed to believe him. 

“I’m not! I like spending time with you.” He continued, his hands running over my thighs eliciting a small smile from both of us. “I love it… even when you’re mean to me.”

I knocked his hands off me, turning my body away as I morphed the little grin back into a pout. It was my psyche’s stupid attempt to get him to say more nice things; to show me that he really _did_ want to be with me, even without the sex.

“Yeah, right,” I mumbled. 

“Okay, let’s put it like this.”

I was immediately concerned, turning to him with the most bored look I could muster. He dismissed it and continued anyway.

“There are four major types of symbiotic relationships found in nature, right? Commensalism, parasitism, mutual, and endo- and ectosymbiosis.”

“Why are you giving me a biology lesson right now” It was a rhetorical question, which was the equivalent of me begging him to stop. I really did love his infodumps, but right now I was sensitive and he sounded like he was about to give some kind of parallel birds and the bees talk that I really didn’t want to go through right now.

But how could I stay mad, when he responded to the question with a childlike enthusiasm, raising his hands and moving the fingers like I’d asked the exact right question.

“Because, to me,” he explained, “this relationship is a perfect example of a mutualistic relationship.”

Biting down on my tongue, I saw the amusement dancing across his face. He was having way too much fun with this. Lifting the pillow again, I narrowed my eyes as I mumbled my conclusion.

“I’m going to hit you.”

“Please don’t.” He quickly pleaded before moving back to his lesson, “Look, it’s like… Have you heard of echeneidae? They’re also called remoras, or suckerfish. They’re small fish that are known to attach themselves to the mouths of other, larger fish, like sharks.”

At first, I was going to be annoyed at the reference to sharks, considering a ton of people refer to periods as shark week. But it quickly dawned on me that Spencer would never use terminology like that. Knowing him, his preferred terminology is probably the most clinical. When he saw me lower the pillow, he continued even more eagerly.

“The remoras are happy because they get the protection and food from the shark, and the shark is happy because they don’t have to deal with the irritating, painful presence of the parasitic creatures that the remoras eat.”

“Are you comparing me to a bloodthirsty predator right now.”

Being the genius he was, Spencer quickly shut his mouth. With a pause that wasn’t nearly long enough, he started to backtrack. “I mean, you don’t have to be the shark but—”

Quickly recognizing my glare as the warning that it was, he changed his course yet again. “I mean, no. No, I’m not.”

Better.

“Look, (y/n), I’m just saying that this relationship benefits me just as much as it does you. Even if it doesn’t seem like it should make sense at first blush.”

“I… don’t get it.” My soft admission seemed to worry him, because it _kind of_ backed him into a corner. Either he had to break out in another detailed explanation and risk messig up again, or he had to let it go. Spencer picked a happy medium. Carefully, he held both of his hands up, palms facing me in a sign of defeat.

“I don’t care if we don’t have sex.”

“You couldn’t just… say that?” I asked with a similar hesitation, my body beginning to relax as the tension started to melt away.

“Would you have believed me?”

And then we were both smiling again. Spencer started to shift closer to me, nudging me softly with his leg to get me to admit what we both already knew. “No, probably not. Still kinda don’t.”

“I can talk more about marine biology, if you want.”

“I really do not want that, thank you.”

“Fine.” He relented, dropping his head to rest on the top of mine. “What about land mammals?”

For what I hoped would be the final time, I swatted him in the face with the pillow. It was much weaker this time, only meant to display just how tired I’d grown. He grabbed it before it made contact, balancing it on top of my head before returning to his position against me.

“So… If you’re going to stay…” I mumbled, pulling the pillow out from under him, “What do you want to do?” The question was quiet, and I wasn’t really sure what to offer. Even just in the act of staying, I already felt like I owed him some form of entertainment.

But Spencer really didn’t care. All he seemed to care about was being with me.

“… I don’t know, the usual stuff?” When he shrugged again, the smile that graced my cheeks was full and genuine.

“You just want to… cuddle?” I asked, “And watch bad TV with me?”

“Yeah.” Wrapping an arm around my shoulders, he pulled me even closer so that my head would fall against his chest. “That sounds nice.”

“Well… I guess we could do that, then.” 

Settling against him, I took in all the warmth he had to offer. His gentle, steady heartbeat was a perfect calming metronome. Spencer began drawing loose, feathery circles over my arm and leg. The sensation was a welcome distraction from everything else, and before long I was almost asleep against him.

Sensing the mood shift back to our normal goofy banter, Spencer dared to return to his marine biology lesson – just for a minute. “You would definitely belong to Selachimorpha, by the way… I’m just saying.”

With an unladylike snort, I tilted my head up to see him refusing to look at me, trying to hide a silly grin from my sight.

“Just you wait until this week is over, bud.” I teased, “I’ll show you how hard I can bite.”

Pressing a soft kiss against my hair, Spencer sighed, relaxing further into the couch and turning his attention back to the movie.

“I’m just here for the ride.” 

Under my breath, I snickered. When he glanced down, I gave a toothy grin as I whispered, “ _Sucker_.”


End file.
